Over the past month, I have come to realize that a lot of people tied to Rutgers share the same wrong assumption: that the football team is a stand-in for the entire athletic department. Students, faculty and alumni all say some version of it, and it is a tiring trope to hear, especially given how hard I have worked to promote the Olympic sports on campus.
Yet there is another category of Rutgers sports that almost never gets covered at all.
Club sports.
Some of my closest friends bowl for the Rutgers Bowling Club. Men’s bowling is not an NCAA-sanctioned sport, so the club competes on the USBC collegiate circuit, and this weekend they bowled the opening doubleheader of the Eastern Intercollegiate Bowling Tournament (EIBT) season. What they did on Sunday deserves far more attention than it is going to get.
Rutgers’ varsity team finished fourth of nine teams at EIBT #2 at Lucky Strike North Brunswick, eight pins out of third place, with 4,389 pins over five team games. According to the club’s executive board, it was Rutgers’ best EIBT finish ever and its second-best tournament finish overall.
This result came one day after the same varsity finished eighth of nine at Lodi Lanes.
Rutgers averaged 877.8 pins per team game, 18.4 above the field. At this same event a year ago, the Scarlet Knights averaged 747.8, finished last of eight, and sat 120.8 pins per game below the field. That is 130 more pins every game, one year later.
That is not a small step. That is a different team.
Six on the Varsity, Five on the JV & Plenty of New Faces
For anyone new to college bowling, the format is simple. Each school can enter a varsity and a junior varsity team, five bowlers roll in every team game, and their five scores add up to the team score. Rutgers’ varsity carried six bowlers on Sunday, so one sat each game. EIBT #2 was five team games, and the team total decides the standings.
Most of this roster came up through New Jersey high school bowling, which is mostly bowled on house shot, the friendlier oil pattern you find on open-bowling nights. College events use sport patterns that punish missed shots, which is why high school averages rarely carry straight over.
Anthony Palumbo, a junior, captains the varsity and bowled more games than anyone on the team last season, 41 at a 165.95 average. Drew Hartong (St. Joseph, Metuchen) and Mike Silva (Lenape) are sophomores who averaged 162.59 and 163.63 as freshmen, and Silva led the varsity at this event a year ago. Gavin Williams, a junior, bowled for the JV here last fall. Sean Isler, a sophomore out of Paramus, averaged 178.59 as a high school senior, and Chris Rickert is the freshman of the group, a Shawnee graduate who averaged 202.60 as a senior and once rolled a 714 series.
The JV bowled Henry Marks (McNair, Jersey City), freshman Aidan Reyes (Livingston), who averaged 196.96 as a high school senior, co-captain Reilly Palmese, who bowled on Howell’s back-to-back Group 4 champion girls’ teams, Michael Fleming, another member of the team from Lenape, and Ryan Richards (Mahwah).
Second After Two Games, Then a Fight for Third to the Last Frame
Rutgers opened with an 840, fifth-best in the first game, while William Paterson started the way they would finish, with a 973 on the way to a tournament-best 5,062, more than 600 clear of the rest of the field.
The second game was the one.
Rutgers rolled a 944, second in the round only to William Paterson’s 1,099, with Williams at 218, Palumbo at 204, Silva at 190, Isler at 175 and Hartong at 157. Only William Paterson, Penn State Berks and NJIT rolled a bigger team game all day.
That put Rutgers second after two games, 1,784 pins to Binghamton’s 1,743.
The third game was a tougher one, a 787, and the Scarlet Knights still held third, 19 pins behind Binghamton and 18 ahead of NJIT.
Then Penn State Berks, seventh through three games, rolled a 1,019 in the fourth.
Rutgers answered with an 876 and slipped to fourth anyway, 12 pins behind Berks for the last podium spot, with NJIT another 56 back in fifth.
Rutgers’ fifth game was nearly as big as their second, a 942 that buried Berks’ 845 and moved the Scarlet Knights past them for third.
NJIT had other plans. The Highlanders rolled a 1,006, the second-best fifth game in the building behind William Paterson’s 1,009, and jumped from fifth to third at 4,397.
Rutgers finished at 4,389.
Eight pins, spread across 25 individual games.
Drew Hartong & Gavin Williams Both Finish in the Top 10
Hartong, the sophomore, was Rutgers’ top finisher, eighth of 126 bowlers in the men’s division at 941 (188.2). He rolled 173, 157, 215, 187 and 209, closing with his second 200 game of the day to climb from ninth after four games. A day earlier at Lodi he improved every game, from 135 to 151 to 159 to 178, and a year ago at this event he averaged 156.6, more than 30 pins below where he finished Sunday.
Williams finished 10th at 932 (186.4). He opened 203, 218, 180 and 173, which had him fifth in the entire men’s division after four games, behind three William Paterson bowlers and Stevens’ Matthew Calabrese, before closing with a 158.
That is a huge jump.
Williams averaged 142.75 over 24 games last season, and at this same event a year ago he averaged 129.2 for the JV, 57 pins below Sunday’s mark.
Rutgers was the only team besides William Paterson with two bowlers in the top 10.
Palumbo, the captain, bowled every game of the day and finished 18th at 873 (174.6), climbing from 23rd after four games with a 187 in the 942 to go with his 204 in the 944. A year ago at this event, he was bowling for the JV. Sunday he led the varsity from the front, nearly nine pins above the 165.95 he averaged over a team-high 41 games last season.
Rickert Comes Off the Bench & the Varsity Goes Six Deep
Rickert, the freshman out of Shawnee, opened with a 122 and sat the next two games. Then he came off the bench for the last two and rolled 204 and 228, a 184.7 average across his three games. The 228 was the best Rutgers game of the day and the biggest piece of the 942 that pulled the Scarlet Knights past Berks.
Silva came into Sunday off the best day of his career. On Saturday at Lodi he finished 23rd, his first collegiate top-25 finish, and on Sunday he bowled in both of Rutgers’ two biggest team games, a 190 in the 944 and a 160 in the 942. He averaged 154.0 over four games, a year after leading the varsity at this same event as a freshman.
Isler captained the JV on Saturday and moved up to varsity on Sunday. He rolled 175, 142 and 156 across the middle three games, the 175 coming in the 944, for a 157.7 average. That’s 27 pins above the 130.3 he averaged over 15 games last season.
Six bowlers, and all six bowled in at least one of the two 940s.
That is what a deep team looks like.
The JV Builds to an 830
The JV finished eighth of 10 with 3,597 pins, 94 clear of Binghamton’s JV1, with the same five bowling every game with team totals of 720, 689, 699, 830 and 659.
That 830 in the fourth game was the second-best JV team game of the round, behind only William Paterson JV1’s 929 and one pin better than Stevens JV1, which finished third.
The individual standings don’t split varsity from JV, and they rank by total pinfall. All five JV bowlers bowled every game and were ranked against all 126 bowlers in the men’s division, varsity included.
Henry Marks led the way, finishing 31st at 782 (156.4) and closing his day with a 177 and a 158.
Aidan Reyes, the freshman out of Livingston, opened his day with a 170 and finished 40th at 746 (149.2) in his first college weekend.
Michael Fleming finished 45th at 736 (147.2) in his first weekend in Scarlet, and his 202 in the fourth game was the best Rutgers JV score of the day.
Co-captain Reilly Palmese was 48th at 725 (145.0), and her 167 in the fourth game was part of the 830.
Ryan Richards finished 66th at 608 (121.6), adding a 145 to that same 830.
Five bowlers, five games each, and a fourth game only one JV team in the building could beat.
Rutgers football may be 1-4 and have no chance of “going bowling,” but those at Rutgers who actually go bowling don’t need an invitation. They just need eight more pins, and they will find them easily as they look to earn more hardware.
Just look at who they have to find them with. Drew Hartong & Mike Silva spends their time writing about the best bowlers on the planet, and both walked into Lucky Strike and bowled like their idols this weekend. Gavin Williams went from bowling JV at this event a year ago to the top 10 of it. Chris Rickert came off the bench as a freshman and rolled the best Rutgers game of the day.
A year ago, this team finished last in North Brunswick. This year, it finished eight pins from the podium, and nobody in that building is going to overlook them again.
So the next time someone tells you Rutgers sports begin and end at SHI Stadium, tell them about a Sunday at Lucky Strike.
Eight pins. That’s all.